Since I’m not drinking this year, I haven’t been making beer. But I still like to make food things, so I’ve been teaching myself how to bake bread and roast coffee beans.
So the thing about making beer is that it really isn’t that difficult. Brooklyn Brew Shop says If you can make oatmeal, you can make beer, and it is entirely true. If you can just follow a recipe, you can turn malted barley, water, hops, and yeast into beer.
The thing about baking bread is that there’s a little more intuition to it than making beer, but not much. It’s incredibly satisfying to mix up flour, water, salt, and yeast by hand, fold the dough, let it rise, shape it into loaves, and bake it. There are all sorts of different types of bread to make, but that basic combination is pretty easy to understand. Like brewing, if you can follow directions, you can turn those things into bread.
Roasting coffee, though, is much more difficult to perfect. I’m using a smart roaster (the Behmor 1600+) that controls the delicate parts of the process, including the heat curve, the speed of the turning drum that holds the beans, and the cooling process. But roasting coffee isn’t something where you put the beans in, push some buttons, and wait until PRESTO you have roasted coffee beans. There’s a steep and complex learning curve (at least there was for me) and a very small margin of error. In my experience, when I’m roasting 1/4 pound to 1/2 pound of beans, there’s anywhere from 15 to 45 seconds of intense terror that I have to watch very closely, because in that tiny window of time, I’ll either end up with something decent or a complete a pile of fail. Unlike beer, which can sometimes end up not as hoppy or malty as I wanted, but still be drinkable, or bread, which may not rise as much as I wanted but still makes a nice tartine, if the coffee beans are off, they pretty much have to go into the trash. I mean, unless you’re really into wet cardboard.
So it was kind of a big deal for me recently when I had acquired enough data to feel like I knew what I was doing, and could reasonably expect the raw beans I put into the roaster to come out tasting like something I wanted to drink and share with others. (I didn’t mention that roasting coffee beans provides an opportunity for lots of notes, just like brewing and baking does, and it’s essential to do that if you want to get anywhere close to mastering it).
Anyway, I decided to offer some beans in the secret store, and the first batch came out yesterday. It’s pretty much exactly how I wanted it to come out, and I’m proud of myself, so I put some pictures from the roast on the other side of the jump, along with some notes on the process.
I’m roasting some more today, and my house smells great. There’s also some pure levain sourdough bulk fermenting, that I’ll shape and proof in about an hour or so. The kitchen at Castle Wheaton is getting all kinds of action today.
Wow, you are just full of awesome in this post. I’m not a beer drinker but at one time I was a baker. I very much remember making my own sourdough and keeping it alive and well fed. Making the proof, letting it rise overnight (cold kitchen in Vermont) punching it down, rise again, do the kneading part which is So.Damn.Satisfying. Then the breads. Rounds, baguttes, rolls, knots and more. There is something very satisfying in baking bread which seems simple but can be damn complex. I had my grandmere’s recipes which was my start.
The bean roasting? I’ve wanted to do this but honestly the complexity just boggles me and I am not on board with trying yet. I am glad you wrote what you did because now I’ll read more before I start. I do my own tea blends so coffee need to be the next step. (wrote steep… mind wants what it wants).
As always, thank you for sharing glimpses into your life. This last month has been a roller coaster of terror and anxiety and depression but this post…. Diamonds!
Good timing. I’m crafty at stuff, I have made bread, I could make beer if I want to, but coffee beans curve is too scary for me. Nice work there! I used up the last of my beans this morning of the coffee I brought home from Kenya. Husband’s 44th birthday is on Wednesday, so he will likely be getting beanery gifts along with whatever nerdobelia I can find online. I’m not shopping with three demon spawn screaming children (because target turns them into satan’s children for some reason.) I don’t know where I’m going with this. I have to eat lunch and prepare for guests!
Very cool.
Have you tried a baking a bread braid? Impress your friends! http://www.breadworld.com/recipes/Three-Flour-Braided-Bread
My husband roasts all of our coffee beans with a whirley pop on the grill and it took him a bit of trial and error to get the perfect timing down. And, damn, he smells so good when he comes into the house after roasting!
Nice!
I’ve been roasting on a Behmor 1600 for years now (and sourcing from Sweet Maria’s). What works best for my machine is a 14.5 oz green load with a starting profile of 1lb, P4C – then adjust to taste from there for future batches. It’s a nice starting point that won’t ruin your beans very often (might be more or less roasted than what you were shooting for, but very drinkable). Listen for that 1st crack to start rolling and then in about 2 min. hit the cool button. The larger bean mass gives you more time to react and you will be less likely to ruin your batch.
I’ve been baking bread for a while now. I really enjoy it and from the way it disappears, I’m pretty sure my family does too.
I tried brewing beer a couple of years ago and found it much more difficult. The feedback loop with bread, while not immediate, can be measured in hours. With beer, it’s weeks. I found it much slower to build up intuition on what makes good beer vs not so good beer.
A book that I found useful and entertaining for bread baking is Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread https://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Mastering-Extraordinary/dp/1580082688
Good luck with your reboot. I’m looking forward to reading the stories you’ve been working on.
Secret Store? Cool new hobbies, Wil. I still make beer but concentrate on meads st this point. I started making sourdough bread about three years ago, nothing better than fresh baked sourdough. I have an awesome Cheddar Jalapeno Bacon sourdough recipe if you are interested. You may already have this book, but I recommend “Tartine Bread” by Chad Robertson of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. The book has a great photographic tutorial and many recipes. King Arthur Flour has some great recipes on their website, plus they have a sourdough culture for purchase that has been maintained since the 1760s. I want to start roasting coffee but haven’t had time to start yet.
Did anyone recommend the roaster you are using? I have it on my Amazon list but have not gotten the itch to “add to cart” quite yet. I’m curious if you do it in the house or garage because of possible smoke output… would love to hear updates as you experiment and types of favorite beans. Thanks again for sharing.
Bread making or coffee roasting, much like brewing, is probably only as good as the effort (and data) you’re willing to commit to it. Yes, you can make bread or beer with a very simple recipe, but results can be significantly improved with more data, effort, and technique. I thought I was doing the Lord’s work by producing passable beer in my Mr. Beer kit…until I discovered BIAB. Then I thought I had it all worked out…until I discovered all-grain with coolers and sparging and better santization. That’s where I’m at right now…except now I discovered creating your own water profiles. So, I think the further down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go, the more discovery awaits on the other side of the mirror.
I love the smell of anything baking…I’ve been baking things since I was little, I totally enjoy baking over cooking. Now I’m exploring different types of flour since I can no longer eat wheat and most grains….and enjoying new ways of making some of my old well used recipes. Too bad you can’t send scent over the wires, I imagine your house smells lovely!
mmmmm, coffee. One of the basic food groups.
Sally, did you know chocolate is just one carbon dihydride away from caffeine?
This explains so much.
What fun! I love making bread. I have never roasted coffee. I live in the land of coffee (NW) so I am lucky to have much good coffee near by.
I love to experiement with baking things! I am not a coffee drinker but I find I have similar moments of terror when smoking items, since it can overwhelm things. Being creative in different ways helps in all creative arenas
Wil, any coffee with egg nog as a creamer is delicious.
Hi Wil, long time reader, first post.
I’m a fellow roaster too for the last 3 years, using a Behmor too.
I used to drink the fake (powdered coffee, milk, flavoring, other bads) stuff, until my wife told me to stop using it.
Started with store bought ground coffee in a drip, then progressed to store bought roasted beans in a grinder and expresso maker.
My wife realized she had created a monster though when i bought home my Behmor, and started to roast my own beans – and finally expressing coffee with a proper crema!
When we moved house earlier this year, the original expresso maker died – a good excuse to upgrade to a proper expresso “machine”, not an appliance. Even had to make an appointment to purchase said machine, as the vendor prefers one on one’s to ensure we end up with the most suitable machine and know how to use and maintain it. It consistently pulls a better result.
The problem now is that on the rare occasions i do go to a cafe, I’m usually disappointed by their product – and i live in Melbourne, Australia that has a large Greek/Italian population and their associated coffee culture.
To answer the question re where to roast – you’ll want to roast outside (or in the garage but open to outside), as while the Behmor afterburner takes care of most of the fumes, it is still quite a strong smell you don’t want to permeate your house. And a couple of the chemicals released during roasting can damage the lungs (diacetyl and 2,3-pentanedione), so i usually start roasting and stay inside except for the safety check/istening for the first crack and adjusting timer.
Regards, Grant.
Ps. You’ll want to remove the top/rear exhaust cover, and the right side panel of the Behmor once a year and clean it out – as very fine bean dust will accumulate and eventually affect the mechanism.
Pps. Watched the first 2 new Tabletop episodes – glad to see you getting past the bad stuff and back to doing great stuff.
Looks like you picked the wrong year to give up drinkin’ beer.
Right? Or maybe I picked the best year, all things considered.
I’m jealous of your results, and your smart roaster. This is a seed that might grow into a self gift, explained away as a bonus Christmas present, “it’s a gift for ‘us,’ honey~”
Have you made croissants, yet? They are the current peak of kitchen accomplishment satisfaction for my wife and I. We haven’t made them many times; they are labor intensive, by our measure, anyway, but afterward the house smells amazing, and, assuming they turned out well, we feel like total pros. And as you pointed out, bread is really pretty straightforward, but everything feels easy for us right after finishing croissants. For the first week I’ll agree to making a pie without giving it any thought, because it just feels like taking a walk.
It’s interesting that you mention croissants. I’ve wanted to learn how to make them, with the ultimate goal of doing pan au chocolat.
But until I can get my damn pure levain loaves to rise properly, I can’t move on to something new.
Wil, I don’t know what methods you use when you bake so forgive me if this is already information that you have and use: What flour do you use? I use King Arthur whole wheat flour, bread flour, and unbleached all purpose flour. My natural levain loaves rise pretty well with these flours using Chad Robertson’s methods (see my previous post). I’ve tried grinding my own ancient grains wheat but those loaves do not rise as much and seem pretty dense (although they taste great). I’ll have to practice with ancient grains more this coming year. I cook my bread in a cast iron Dutch oven in my gas range. Start by leaving the Dutch oven lid on for the first 20 minutes, this retains moisture and allows the loaf to rise more – kind of like a steam oven used by professional bread bakers. If you spritz the loaf right when you put it into the Dutch oven, you will get even more rise. See my results here:
http://www.1958buickforum.net/webpage/bread4.JPG
http://www.1958buickforum.net/webpage/bread5.JPG
http://www.1958buickforum.net/webpage/bread2.JPG
Hope this helps. Please post more about your coffee roasting adventures, I plan to start roasting my own in the coming year. I love good coffee and hope to use some of my roasted beans for brewing stouts and porters as well.
P.S. – The date on the pics is wrong, I was too lazy to reset the camera. They were taken in 2014.
A bookmark for later, then. This baker, she bakes the way I do, with aggravating, obsessive attention to detail. Don’t apologize, Stephanie Jaworski; the ruler belongs in the kitchen every bit as much as the measuring cup. Her video and collection of tricks are what finally got my wife and I the results we wanted.
http://www.joyofbaking.com/breads/HomemadeCroissants.html
how secret is the secret store and what kind of handshake do we need to learn to gain access?
Nice roast! Classic Indonesian with that mottled color. Indonesian coffee can be great; so earthy and interesting…
You’re a braver man than I. The smaller your roast, the more fiddly the time can be. I only roast 1lb lots anymore. I preheat for 1:30 with the coffee in the basket and the chaff-catcher in. Then I hit “off” and immediately enter “1” “P3” “D” and then repeatedly press the “+” until the time is maxed-out. This gives a moderately gentle cycle-up with 23:30 of roasting time so I have plenty of time to finish manually. The safety confirmation is at 6:24 so I start monitoring again at about 10min because the Behmor power controls don’t take into account any voltage sag you experience from neighbors running the air conditioning & such, so finishing on manual lets me have a little more control over the end of the roast.
We drank the last of the Sweet Maria’s Moka Kadir blend (mostly Indonesian I think) a few days ago so I roasted up some Vietnamese beans that “Mr Green Beans” (Portland local) had in stock. The Vietnam doesn’t have the brute strength or complexity of the Moka Kadir, but it has low acidity and sort of an astringent almost Oolong kind of palate cleansing thing. I took it moderately into second crack — not French, but definitely City+. I pressed a few shots this afternoon and it was wonderful – tangy but not bitter – better as an espresso than as a drip coffee.
Reading your blog has reminded me to try cold-press. I bet the Vietnamese would be great for that. It’s very tea-like to begin with.
Cheers to you & yours. Time to go prep some cold-press and then hit the rack.
PS> Hahahahaha…. my dog is snoozing by me on the couch as I write this. He was running in his dream. His feet were flicking and he looked so happy and then he just up and kicked me with one foot and woke up and looked surprised….. hahahaha… What a cool little dude he is.
May I humbly suggest churning your own butter, if you’ve never done it before? It’s incredibly easy (whisk cream until it’s firm, continue whisking until it separates, the solid is butter and the liquid buttermilk) and I feel like everyone who likes butter should do it at least once.
I once did a 27-hour endurance butter churning for charity. The guy running the event said “how do you make butter?” and I said “cream and admin”.
My dad baked bread until he broke his leg (and couldn’t stand to punch/knead anymore). I learned to slice fresh bread at age 10, cause my mom didn’t have the patience. His highlight was english muffins – more nooks and crannies than $BRAND, and I still remember his absolute delight to find out that the secret was cooking them on top of the stove.
I also know someone who ‘roasts’ his coffee one cup-worth of beans at a time, in a frypan on the stove. Doesn’t sound like something I could do for my morning cup…
Love the Behmor and have many, many roasts under my belt.
First thing I recommend is buying beans from Green Bean Buyers club.
Second thing, buy beans with cupping notes over 90 points.
Third, buy fifteen pounds so you can play with the same bean.
Fourth, roast 300 grams at a time.
Good luck!
https://rainfroginc.com
I roast using a Behmor as well, and using the Rainfrog Roastmaster application is much easier than writing it down on paper. For one thing, the app allows you to easily visualize your roast profile:
http://i.imgur.com/1V2Sj5m.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/MIMMy72.jpg
If you have a roast which you want to repeat because it was good, this is a good way.
https://youtu.be/wOa2LQY6Uy4
A good source of beans gets a great writeup here: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/coffee-737435-sims-beans.html
Hey Will, I also am a home coffee roaster and coincidentally use a Behmor 1600+… I belong to a home roaster forum on Facebook a closed group with 1000’s of others who share this craft including coffee roasters with brick and mortar ‘s and even a few coffee growers all of these knowledgeable people from all over the world would love to have you join our group as i have shared this blog with these fine and intrigued folks… I think you would enjoy and learn a lot from this fine group some of which have been roasting for years and even some decades!!…
Steph @ wise owl coffee roaster
Coffee is wonderful, but I was having trouble with sleep and anxiety (as you mentioned in your reboot post). I gave it up about three weeks ago and I feel exponentially better. My caffeine withdrawals were bad, which convinced me I was on the right track, and I’m glad I stuck with it. Missing the smell of coffee beans more than actually drinking it, now.